So I wake up wondering — first thought of the morning — HOW the hell I’m going to stay out of that venerable old-folkerie, the Beatitudes. Remembering how my father thought its direct competitor, Orangewood (now called The Terraces), was THE most brilliant idea that came around, and how my mother resisted and refused to go in there, and then how my father suffered (almost as much as she did) as she lay dying of cancer while he struggled to care for her in their little house in Sun City, all by himself.
The neighbors threw a birthday party last week for my walking pal, Marge. She’s NINETY-SEVEN YEARS OLD and still going strong! With no plans to retire to an old-folkerie.
The way she pulls it off, as I may have explained before, is that she took out a large home equity loan against her paid-off house. Her husband and her only child pre-deceased her, and so she has no reason to preserve the value in that house to pass it along to the next generation.
This maneuver provided plenty of cash for her to hire folks to come in and help her.
I really can’t do that. Well…I could. But I don’t wanna. I want to leave this house to my son. If I take out a $300,000 loan against it, he’ll be cut out of my ENTIRE estate: however much of my cash I need to eat and house myself, plus whatever I borrow to stave off some avaricious “retirement home.”
Problem is…longevity runs on the distaff side of my family. Average age at death of people in the past three generations has been 81.5 years — a figure dragged down by my mother committing suicide by tobacco and my uncle climbing on a chair to change a ceiling lightbulb, falling, breaking a hip, and subsequently dying. If you take my mother’s suicide out of the equation, the average life span over the past three generations has been 84 years. If you remove my father’s side and my mother’s suicide, then you get an average lifespan of 89 years. This would stay the same if you included my father’s nonsmoking brother, who died at 89 in the chair-climbing exploit.
It would appear that two habits sharply shortened life spans in both sides of the family: smoking and promiscuity. Those who did not smoke, did not drink, and did not cat around lived into their 90s. Consistently!
Oh well. Let us assume that even without undue deprivation, here in the 21st century it’s reasonable to expect to live well into one’s 90s.
Now you really ARE faced with the question of how you stay out of a prison for the decrepit elderly. Most of the work around this house is done by hired help now. But…even wrangling the underlings is a challenge — and likely to get more and more difficult the older one gets.
I’m thinking a possible — indeed, probable — solution for that is to move into a condo, one where the exterior is cared for by the HOA and the interior can easily be handled by casual hired help. Once ensconced, then, all you’d need to do is hire a traveling nurse or some such to help you with health care and maybe driving.
Several of my friends are living in a high-rise apartment building on Central Avenue. It’s smack in the middle of everything, and the views are incredible. So…I see that as one possibility.
Additionally, another high-rise is going in right across the street from AJ’s, my favorite grocery-store hangout. This building will combine office space with apartment rentals. I imagine the price will be staggering…but…but…
Yes: but… From there I can walk to my son’s house. And it’s right on the light-rail line. If I decided (as I’ve been contemplating) to change my church affiliation from the North Central outfit to the downtown Cathedral, that light-rail would let me off right in front of the place. A friend lives in the downtown area and likes to habituate the restaurants in that part of town: she and I could meet down there and, again: I wouldn’t have to risk my life in a car to get there.
Another possibility is an aging but rather elegant apartment house directly across the street from the Cult HQ. The place has been there as long as I’ve lived in Phoenix…and given construction standards here, that means it’s poorly insulated for heat as well as for sound: hot and noisy! On the other hand: it’s right on Central, so the city bus would take me straight down to AJ’s front door. A three-block stroll to Seventh Avenue would deliver me to a bus stop for a line that goes directly past my son’s house. So if driving were taken away from me, I still would be able to get to my main day-to-day destinations.
So…there are alternatives to the dreaded “life-care community” option — some of them pretty good alternatives.
